1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of remote data collection. More specifically, embodiments of the present invention relate to the requesting, transmitting, collecting, storing, reviewing, and publishing of remotely collected data as supplied by an electronic device, e.g., a computer system, a portable computer system, a palmtop computer system, or any other hand-held electronic device that utilizes a display screen, such as a cell phone, a pager, etc.
2. Related Art
Over the last couple of decades, peer-to-peer and server-client computing have been extensively utilized. For example, in the late 1980s, Sun Microsystems' operating system allowed networked computers to share their disk storage across the network. In essence, this provided for sharing a resource, in this case disk storage, amongst many computers. A more recent example is the Napster music-sharing system. In the Napster system, music files are stored across a very large number of personal computers, and users can copy a music file from many different places. Once again, the shared resource is disk storage.
Another example of shared storage resources is provided by Gnutella. From their website at www.gnutella.wego.com: “Gnutella is a fully-distributed information-sharing technology”; and “when you run Gnutella software and connect to the Gnutella Network, you bring with you the information you wanted to make public. That could be nothing, it could be one file, a directory, or your entire hard drive.” Essentially, Gnutella provide a means for the user of a personal computer to share any part of the contents of his hard disk with other users on the Internet.
Networked computers have also shared computational resources. A large computational task, such as the factoring of a very large number, can be split into a plurality of smaller tasks, and each smaller task is assigned to a separate computer. A practical example of shared computational resources is the SETI@home project (having a web page at http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/), where radioastronomy data is collected at a central server, and subsets are parceled out to personal computers over the Internet. The personal computers search the subsets for potential extraterrestrial signals.
As the components required to build a computer system have reduced in size, new categories of electronic devices and computer systems have emerged. One of the new categories of computer systems is the “palmtop” computer system. A palmtop computer system is a computer that is small enough to be held in the hand of a user and can therefore be “palm-sized.” Most palmtop computer systems are used to implement various Personal Information Management (PIM) applications such as an address book, a daily organizer (calendar, datebook, etc.) and electronic notepads, to name a few. Palmtop computers with PIM software have been know as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs). Many PDAs have a small and flat display screen associated therewith. Also, PDAs are now including a wireless connection to a network, including the Internet, making them candidates for resource sharing. PDAs are generally designed to be light, inexpensive, and power efficient, and this makes them poor candidates for sharing either data storage or computational resources.
PDAs are now including various peripheral input devices, such as microphones, global positioning systems (hereinafter, GPS), and cameras. Since a PDA is, basically, a computer, the numerous types of other input/output devices that have been interfaced to a computer can be interfaced, or incorporated into, a PDA. Such other input/output devices include: video cameras, altimeters, and seismic activity recorders.
In addition to PDAs, other portable electronic devices have display screens and wireless network connections, such as cell phones, electronic pagers, remote control devices and other wireless portable devices. All of these devices have been adapted to display short lists of information on the display screens to help the user organize and display information, e.g., phone records.
User convenience is a very important factor for portable electronic devices. Typically, portable electronic devices are employed while the user is on the run, e.g., in business meetings, on business travel, personal travel, in a vehicle, on foot, etc. Because the user may be occupied or busy while using the portable electronic device, the number of user steps or user tasks required in order to access information from an electronic device (or to store information into the electronic device) is crucial for producing a commercially successful and useful product. That is, the more difficult it is to access data from an electronic device or input data into an electronic device, the less likely the user will perform those tasks. Likewise, the easier information is to obtain, the more likely the portable electronic device will be used to obtain that information and the more likely the portable electronic device will become a part of the user's everyday activities. For electronic devices to be used for resource sharing, the sharing must be very convenient for the user.
The prior art for remote data gathering includes various dedicated devices. An example is a remote weather station for collecting temperature, rainfall, barometric pressure, and other weather-related data. Another example is a location-tracking device attached to migratory animals, used to study animal migration patterns. Unfortunately, present devices for gathering geographically distributed data are dedicated-purpose devices, and are not appropriate for use in the general population of people. Hence, present-day devices are not useful for tasks such as: gathering automobile traffic conditions; opinion polling; and on-the-spot supplying of news information.